A Pocket Full of Gold

Prologue

The firelight flickered in the eyes of the tall, slender man as he watched the faces of his two companions. The woods were quiet, the silence disturbed only by the sound of a lonely cricket. They watched the fire as the flames danced hypnotically, sending their shadows into frenzied convulsions among the twisted oaks. Darkness cloaked the trees, gloomy and forbidding. The fire crackled and a pocket of sap in one of the logs popped suddenly, sending bright sparks flying up into the black void, and the two men flinched. The tall one took notice.

One of the men, short and thick with the red face of a whiskey drinker, rubbed his hands together trying to generate some heat. "I thought it wasn’t supposed to get cold in Florida," he said in a lowered voice, looking at the tall man with the long, black hair.

The tall one allowed a smile. "Every once in a while a cold front comes down and reminds us that it’s wintertime," he said, quietly. "Raymond should have told you that."

Raymond, a lanky man in his early thirties, shrugged at his friend the whiskey drinker. "It’s February, Vince, what the hell did you expect? This ain’t Jamaica."

The lone man watched Raymond and Vince make faces at each other, their features standing out in pale contrast to the shadows. They seemed nervous.

Raymond looked across the fire. "So, Silver, when do we go after the treasure? It’s getting late. Shouldn’t we be, like, starting to dig it up?"

The tall one, known as Silver, met the man’s gaze. He was looking for something in Raymond’s eyes, something he’d seen earlier, in the daylight.

"Soon," he said. Silver’s dark eyes, hooded by a prominent brow, revealed nothing. "We go soon."

"How far are we going to have to carry it? I mean, it’s heavy, right?" Vince asked.

"I hope it’s heavy," Silver said, nodding. "If it’s not, we’re surely wasting our time."

Raymond and Vince stood looking at the fire, contemplating Silver’s words, and thoughts of shiny gold coins danced in their heads. They conjured images of gold and silver and jewels in glistening piles, and their heads swam as they tried to imagine the dollar figure.

Silver heard a familiar sound off in the woods. It started out as a guttural, throaty growl and slowly grew louder and rose in pitch. The other two men heard the unearthly sound and looked into the woods, alarmed. The sound gradually rose to a climax and seemed to hold the high note before ending suddenly in a blood curdling shriek.

"Jesus Christ!" Raymond blurted.

"Holy shit!" Vince said.

Silver laughed quietly, enjoying the fear of the two men. "Never heard a wildcat before, boys?"

"That was a wildcat?" Raymond asked with big eyes, his mouth open.

Vince looked like he’d seen a ghost, or heard one, perhaps.

"How far into the woods are we gonna have to go?" Vince asked in a voice two octaves higher than normal.

"A little ways, but don’t worry, those wildcats probably won’t mess with us, unless we walk right up on one," Silver said. "The gators, though, you never can tell with them." This didn’t do much to boost Vince’s confidence.

"So can we see the map?" Raymond asked, a bit too eagerly.

Silver was looking into his eyes again, searching, when an arrow suddenly arrived in Raymond’s chest with a quiet "schwick". His eyes popped open in surprise, and before he could say or feel anything, he toppled over, dead before he hit the ground.

Another arrow sliced the air and shot through Vince’s throat, knocking him sideways as a stream of blood erupted from his neck. He stumbled, almost went down to one knee, kept his feet and staggered toward the fire, finally pirouetting and falling backward as he clutched at his throat, landing just as dead as Raymond.

Silver saw this happen in a split second and whirled around, unsure of the location of the threat. His eyes searched the darkness and found nothing, only the shadows in a macabre dance, taunting his fear. He crouched, his heart pounding, waiting for another arrow to find its mark. The only sound was that of the leaves rustling in the wind, like survivors of a shipwreck whispering in the dark. His blood turned to ice when a voice from the shadows broke the silence.